They might have changed the theme, but that was because Miyamoto was bent on having another Star Fox game and also because he claimed the design was strikingly similar to Star Fox. It had nothing to do with it. The new  Dynasty Warriors Zelda is going through the same issue right now. Think its a joke? Its all Nintendos fault. When history repeats itself and the reskinning process in Nintendo's rush to pump out games continues, can you be the one to spot it?

It's not very technically demanding though.

WTH???
i dont think Zelda Musou and Starfox adv. are similar cases in any way...Starfox adv. was rushed because Rare was about to be bought.

Zelda musou is a very specific Japanese game genre with a Zelda skin, a partnership, Nintendo puts the name and Whoever makes Zelda musou makes the actual game, and they split the gainings.

S.T.A.G.E. still doing the same shit in any Nintendo related topic I see.

You say I am doing the same thing, yet its a similar case with Zelda and Starfox. I am just illustrating a point. Nintendo will resort to reskinning if they feel rushed to compete. This is why they need third parties. If they lack them they will pull bullshit like this. Their first party will be fine, but their partners games might not come off as good as it could be.

And what exactly is wrong with what they are doing with Hyrule Warriors?

Its going to be cheap and not up to Nintendo level standards. 

Better than no game at all.

I've had similar thoughts to this at times, but I'm not sure that it's true.

NES: Nintendo really pushed the boundaries of 8-bit development here. SMB3 did some some pretty awesome stuff. Games like Zelda and Metroid also pushed what a game could be. Other games like FF3 and late comers like TMNT2 and Battletoads may have been the absolute max of the system, but many Nintendo games really broke new ground.

SNES: On launch it was definitely non-Nintendo titles that looked the most impressive. Castlevania 4 and FFIV stood out as next-gen much more than SMW - although F-Zero was also very breath-taking, as was Pilotwings. In the end Rare's DKC series was the presentation benchmark. So if you want to count Rare as Nintendo, then I think they really pushed the system's abilities.

N64: For me the groundbreaking games on the system are M64, OoT and MM. So I would say that Nintendo really pushed the N64 and were at the cutting edge of game tech during these years. You could also include Goldeneye for being groundbreaking.

GC: I would call Zelda:WW the benchmark.

Wii: SMG and Xenoblade were the games that pushed the system the best.

Wii U: To date, the best presentation is SM3DW.

In summary, I think that Nintendo actually does push the limits of its hardware. I think lately they are really missing the skill of good third party support that can make games with different themes and presentation that can push the system, but overall Nintendo has frequently made some pretty ground-breaking titles. Even if sometimes they were exceeded at some point by a 3rd party game, it's not necessarily for the better. A game like Doom on SNES may push the system beyond its limits, but I don't really think that's a good thing. Programming within the limits can give you a better result, and sometimes takes more true skill.

Nintendo has often pushed their own systems tech - I'd like to see that a little more with Wii U. Mario and Zelda games should really be ground breaking. I'm hoping for something good with Zelda U.